


The Bread of Adversity, the Waters of Affliction

by executrix



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Audrey and Nathan (but mostly Audrey) cope with a new Affliction. Duke helps, but then he has a personal interest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bread of Adversity, the Waters of Affliction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jamjar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjar/gifts).



_This isn’t real,  
But I just want to feel.  
I want the fire back._

1.  
Felix Dommergue did not eat at chain restaurants. He had his standards to maintain. The trunk of his car was chocked with costumes (mostly jackets and ties—his work meant that he was generally seen from the waist up only), wigs, and glasses.

So, when, contrary to the reputation of fine Scandinavian engineering, his car ground to a halt and refused to go any further, he was not only annoyed, he was tired and a little frightened. It was dark. It was cold. And he was hungry. He had expected to be home in time to spatchcock a poussin and eat it over a small salad of bitter leaves. Or perhaps turn some shrimp in spitting-hot olive oil infused with meyer lemon and piquillo peppers. In a pinch, lightly toast a baguette (it wouldn’t be fresh, he’d bought it ten hours earlier) and slice some brie and Serrano ham. If it was late enough to consider it breakfast rather than supper, he might fry some eggs to top garlic fried rice. But here he was, far from home, stuck in the middle of nowhere.

He phoned the AAA, growled at the estimated time of arrival, and settled down to wait. He got the space blanket out of the trunk, grimaced as he drank an insufficiently cold bottle of mineral water, ate some 90% cacao single-estate chocolate, and read a few chapters in a book on molecular gastronomy he was reviewing.

Felix Dommergue was not just a man, he was a brand. One disdainful sniff in his widely syndicated and vlogged reviews could drop a restaurant in its tracks. His endorsement could make a coffee plantation rich. His disdain could send a chutney-manufacturer back to the farmer’s market if not indeed to the showers. Foodies wouldn’t be caught dead sautéing in a pan that lacked his imprimatur.

Eventually the tow truck arrived. The two frightening yokels, clad in plaid shirts and gimme caps, took his car to the nearest garage (which wasn’t open, of course). Dommergue left a note with his phone number under the windshield wiper. The extremely non-elfin guys (whom he couldn’t help thinking of as The Two Towers) advised him that there might be a room at the motel. There was, and a gray-haired lady in a silver-sprinkled lavender sari yawned as she checked him in.

Dommergue sighed, knowing that the alternatives were famishment and disappointment, and asked if there were anyplace he could get something to eat. The guy whose jacket was embroidered “Larry” said that last call at the Grey Gull wasn’t until two but the kitchen closed at eleven. “Matt” said that Nan & Dan’s Chat’n’Chew Café, now under new management, had gone to 24-7, and it was about a quarter of a mile from the motel.

The décor of the café was just old enough to be embarrassing, not quaint or even cute. Track lighting cast alternate pools of gloom and glare. The Formica on the walls spoofed alien trees. The seat cushions in the booths, a little sprung and ripped here and there, were the powerful orange of Tang. The tables were dressed with laminated place mats: “Fun With State Facts!” Each table bore a tiny milk glass vase with a fuchsia plastic carnation stuck into it. Some of the black and white checkerboard floor tiles were picking up at the corners. But Matt and Larry had already driven away (carrying a sack of onion-redolent burgers). Dommergue had to admit that everything looked shining clean, and there was a pleasant tang of lemon and spices in the air, not a stench of industrial cleaners.

Dommergue propped his head in his hands, waiting stolidly. There wasn’t even the prospect of a drink to drown the taste of the horrifying food that was his fate. Then he heard heavy footsteps approach his booth, and the sound of someone clearing his throat. Unwillingly, Dommergue opened his eyes.

“I’m your Number One fan!” said the tall guy, a mountain of weirdness with popping eyes and long wavy hair that Felix wouldn’t be caught dead in a ditch in even if it fooled a celebrity chef.

“Ah, Vince, don’t embarrass him,” said the guy with him at the only other occupied table. Dommergue perked up: those fifties-style glasses had potential as a disguise. “Let the man get something to eat.” He waved at Dommergue. “We own the local paper, y’see, and we’ve just put this week’s edition to bed.”

The menu was just two printed sheets slipped into a plastic folder bound in tattered brown tape. The front of one and the back of the other gave the address, phone number, Website, and Facebook page, so the actual bill of fare was only two pages.

Dommergue knew he was in for a dreadful ordeal as he scanned the meager offerings, although, at least, since the menu sheets were printed on a computer, there weren’t any missing or broken letters. The weird guy counseled, “Get the Yankee bean soup! It’s great!”

“Naaah,” said a chunky harridan who, impossibly, had a lit cigarette dangling from her grim, near-lipless mouth that bore a slash of bright red lipstick lacking correspondence with the contours beneath. Didn’t they have laws in this godforsaken wide place in the road? “Ya had the last bowl, Vince.” (He reddened in embarrassment, and looked down.) “The bean soup is off. We got one more serving of American Chop Suey left, though. Bert’s makin’ beef stew, but it won’t be ready for another hour at least.”

“All right,” Dommergue said, with the languishing sigh of a Victorian actor touring in “The Only Way.” He saw that, without his asking or even noticing, a thick white mug of coffee had been placed on the table.

He spread the paper napkin over his lap, resigned to taking some nourishment to support life, Then he nearly dropped the thin fork (its tines pointing eccentrically) that had been placed not quite straight on the paper napkin. The elbow macaroni was not limp and overcooked…it was limpid and voluptuously textured. The tomatoes sang of tangy flavor. Walt Whitman himself would have wiped a salty tear from his beard. The beef, heartily browned on the outside, moist and tender within, was the purest expression of the savor of Meat. Dommergue blessed the American cheese, a river of molten gold. He lifted the mug to his lips, and breathed in a delicate aroma. The brew was thin enough that, under other circumstances, he would have scorned it, but it was refreshing, yet rich.

“I see ya cleaned your plate,” the waitress said. “Didn’t leave none for Miss Manners. Ya want dessert? The grapenuts pudding is all, but we got pie.”

“What kind is it?”

“Red.”

Mesmerized, Dommergue nodded, too dazed with pleasure to insist on a more specific identification. The pie crust was pale, the sticky contents were…crimson. He was torn between wanting to prolong the delight of nibbling at the pie and wanting to devour it for the piquant dance of sweetness and tartness, even though he still couldn’t say what kind it was. It was a revelation of Fruit, or maybe Berries, or Dessert. Or even Satiation or Contentment. When the last forkful was finished (and scraped against the crazed white plate) and his fourth mug of coffee drained, he rose to his feet and applauded loudly, ending up with his hands over his head, palms pounding, shouting, “My compliments to the chef!”

The noise drew the proprietor out of the kitchen. He wasn’t very tall, and he was stocky, or even stockpotty, given the cylindrical nature of his stout torso. Dommergue nodded a little: he never trusted skinny cooks.

The _chef-patron __wore a navy-blue apron pin-striped in white, with “Bert” embroidered in red. In lieu of a tall hat, he had a yellow bandanna knotted over his head and a pancake turner rampant in his hand. “What’s all the hoo-hah?” he asked._

Dommergue braced for recognition, perhaps even hostility. His picture, with beards or glasses or devil-horns sketched in felt-tip pen (and with thumbtacks driven through his eyes more often than mere chance would suggest) appeared in dozens of restaurant kitchens precisely so he could be thrown out on his ear. But Bert gazed at him with mere mild interest.

“I am the most famous food critic in the world,” Dommergue told the cook in an emotion-choked voice. Bert looked over at Dave, who shrugged. “I have eaten at food stalls in small towns a day’s boat ride from Bangkok! I have eaten at the greatest temples of gastronomy in Paris and Barcelona! I was the honor student of my class at Swiss hotel school! When I abandoned my toque in order to bring my talents to a wider world, my restaurant had three Michelin stars after only a year and a half! And yet…this may be the most perfect meal of my entire life! You are a genius, and I salute you!”

Now it was Bert’s turn to shrug. “It’s edible,” he said.

Dommergue paused by the cash register, astonished that the check could be so small, even for a meal untouched by genius. He looped back to fold a $20 bill for the harridan underneath the sugar shaker, then walked back toward the exit. There was a poster for the high school production of “Brigadoon” taped to the glass in the front door.

“Gonna be in town next Friday?” Dave asked.

“Oh, dear God, no,” Dommergue said.

“Too bad you’ll miss the show,” Dave said. “You know, they got a hell of a band.”

“And, you’ll miss the chowdah,” Vince said. “What a shame!”

The next morning, Dommergue, with a dull lack of surprise, found that the garage didn’t have the necessary part for his car. But he didn’t have time to waste, even with the prospect of more ambrosial meals in easy reach. He got a lift to the bus station, went through his duties in a fever of anticipation, returning quickly.

With a camera crew.

The chowdah was a big hit.

2.  
Audrey unzipped her aqua polar fleece jacket, hung it on the coat tree, and sat down at her desk. “I was over to-- **at!** Ramona Hoxton’s,” she said. “Turned out, when I got there, her daughter said the car wasn’t stolen this time either, her mom just forgets where she put it.”

“Poor Ramona. She was my fifth grade teacher. It’s terrible when they get like that,” Nathan said. “Porter Janclow—that was before you got here, Audrey—was just the same way.”

“Well, we’ve got to get her off the road, before she hurts somebody,” Audrey said. “Who do we call? The AARP?”

Nathan closed his eyes and tipped his head back to think. Audrey looked at the length of his throat. “No, it’s the state Adult Protective Services,” he said, leaning forward to spin the gigantic Rolodex that sprouted cards like the Mohawk of the Girl Who Kicked the Bureaucrats’ nest.

Rhett Susnow, one of the day shift patrolmen, came into the office. He carried a slightly grease-stained white box with a thick wad of carbon copies on top. “We’re rich, boss,” he said. “Crazy traffic jam over on Evander Street, and lookit all the tickets we wrote. Lots of ‘em got out of state plates, though, prolly never collect ‘em.”

“Traffic jam?” Audrey said skeptically. “What is there on Evander Street to create even a…traffic sugar substitute?”

Rhett spilled the tickets into the In box on Nathan’s desk, then opened the bakery box (the size for a large pizza) with only two lonely doughnuts left rattling around. “Nan & Dan’s. One of the Staties gave me a tip, about the doughnuts, y’know?”

There was a brief burst of noise near the sergeant’s desk, then the slam of the heavy front door. “That must be Clu and Sam fightin’ over the last maple bar,” Rhett said.

With scrupulous solomonic fairness, Nathan halved the leftover doughnuts (one jelly, one Boston crème) with his letter opener, turned over an APB, and put half of each on Audrey’s desk. Neither one of them could remember eating them, much less supply a critique, but all four halves were gone by the end of the shift.

3.  
It was not unusual for Duke to be in the police station (or to be in the police station and a bad mood), but Audrey found it piquant to deal with him as a complainant rather than a Person of Interest.

“Thursday night, I only had one six-top—that was the barbershop quartet rehearsal—and five deuces the whole night,” he said earnestly, distress stamped on his face. “Oh, and one lone diner who came in and said he really wanted to be over at Nan & Dan’s, but when he called the reservation line—“ (Audrey did a spit-take) “—they told him that unless he called a month in advance, all they could give him was 3 pm or 2 am, and he really thought about it but he had to, you know, go to work. He had the halibut with the hazelnut browned butter sauce. I came over to ask him how it was, and he had this kind of blank look and said that it was OK but it just wasn’t the same. ”

“I get that you’re upset, Duke, but all this reminds me of is the time that the Grey Gull softball team got its ass handed to it in the first round of the Tavern League. It’s a competition. Somebody else won. Get over it.”

“This is not fair,” Duke said. “This is not a fair fight. This is a guy with supernatural assistance.”

“ **Life** is not fair, Duke. And at least he hasn’t got a liquor license,” Audrey said. “You can still get the bar trade. I mean, as long as he isn’t selling the same ten-cent hamburger over and over, I don’t see what we can do about it. I’m not even sure if we could do anything **then**. He hasn’t broken any laws.”

“Have you **seen** him? This guy is…Chris Brody with a spatula.”

“Yeah, I went over there,” Audrey said. “I had—I don’t know, I think it was a ham and cheese sandwich? Or maybe I ordered the tuna melt. Tasted OK to me, but I didn’t see what the fuss is all about.” She shrugged. “Food isn’t all that important to me, anyway. I mean, maybe if I was the real Audrey Parker instead of whatever the hell I am, it would be more of a thing. And Nathan—well, I try to keep some PowerBars in the truck in case he forgets to eat for so long that he gets woozy.”

“You couldn’t really call him scrawny, though,” Duke said reminiscently. Then he focused on Audrey, astonished by what she had just said. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with Audrey’s body at all, although he might kick her out of bed temporarily so she could go and eat some crackers, but he preferred Evie’s all-you-can-eat-buffet curves.

Duke still remembered a memorable threesome vacation (Duke, Evie, and Edward K. Warburton’s American Express Card) in New Orleans, and the little noises she made at the first forkful of each new dish. (In retrospect, he had to admit that their sex life fell off a cliff as soon as they got married, but he could sometimes enhance a semi-successful episode of marital relations by whispering “Belle cala, tout chaud” in her ear.)

Sometimes he wondered about whether his metabolism was going to exact revenge, and he would blow up like a balloon when (…if nobody with a tattooed maze blew him away…) he climbed to the top of the hill and down the middle-age slope. But the last time he saw his Dad, ol’ Simon looked pretty fit and healthy, even what with being dead.

4.  
Audrey and Nathan got back to the station at about the same time. Luckily there had been no crises in the interim.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“Chamber of Commerce meeting,” Audrey said. “They wanted to tell me that we needed to step up traffic enforcement so the customers could get their snouts in the trough at Nan & Dan’s faster. They’re looking around for something to condemn so they can build a municipal parking lot. Maybe a parking garage. Sam Lefcourt said that two of Bert’s suppliers were going toes-up before the place was re-opened, but now they’re starting 401(k) plans for the second shift, and the sales tax from the diner was going to be enough to re-pave Amberson Boulevard. You?”

“Board of Selectmen called me in. They want me to run Bert out of town on a rail. All this stuff that isn’t happening? Well, they don’t want any strangers to be around to see it. How’d we get into this mess, anyway?”

“Best I can tell, there’s some guy named Meringue or something, he’s a food critic on TV, and lots of people worship the…I don’t know, the dishes he makes soufflés in. He did a big piece on Nan & Dan’s. You’ve seen the rest.”

“A celebrity food critic?” Nathan asked. “I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of rock critics.”

The light from the computer screen wasn’t cutting it any more, so Audrey reached for the switch on the table lamp.

“Don’t,” Nathan said. “I want to…I have to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Audrey said. “I’m listening. About anything.”  
Nathan cleared his throat several times, otherwise falling silent. Eventually, he started up. “I’m telling you this because…well, I have a lot of respect for you, Parker. Not just because you’re good at your job, but because of the way you are around people. The way you care. The way I wish I could be.”

He was pretty sure that Audrey would have shot to kill to protect an Afflicted teenager anyway, but fear of the consequences didn’t slow her down. All the more when killing the Rev got rid of a substantial problem for Nathan. He wondered what he was going to get her for **her** birthday; a benevolent, gift-wrapped murder was a tough act to follow.

“Duke once said that I’d be in trouble if you found out that—how did he put it?—that I’m ‘not a real boy.’”

“Nathan, I could never like you less because you’re Troubled. It’s the definition of ‘not your fault.’ And anyway, you’re a good man.”

“Am I?” he said. “Is that what you can call me? It seems that lately I can’t punch out from a shift until I’ve broken a dozen laws and four Commandments.”

“OK, maybe not everything you do—everything we do—is strictly by the book. Or even strictly legal. But I admire you because everything you do is motivated by how much you care about justice. It means everything to you.”

Nathan took a long draught from the bottle of water on his desk, coughed a little, and started again. “Audrey, why did you let Chris Brody go? Or, why didn’t you just go with him?”

“He was…we were…even though I didn’t fall for his Affliction, intellectually I realize that Chris is a real catch. He’s smart, he’s caring, he’s handsome, he does important work, he really liked me a lot. But. It wasn’t real. It didn’t mean anything. He doesn’t belong here, so he left.”

“But you’re the incomer!”

“I know. But when I looked at him, and I looked at you, and what I’m doing here, what we’re doing here…well. It all seems to fit. Whoever, whatever, I am, this is where I belong.”

“Look, what I wanted to tell you was…well, I slept with Duke. Once.”

Audrey shrugged. “Lots of teenagers experiment. I mean, you guys have known each other practically your whole lives, and even though you don’t always see eye to eye, there’s a real connection there.” She thought, and, he got here first, he’ll be here when I’m gone.

“Yeah, but depending on how you gauge my level of maturity…actually, it was last month.”

Audrey started to laugh, then choked it off and said, “Nathan, I’m not laughing at you. Really. I’m laughing at me because…well, I slept with Duke once. But it was **two** weeks ago.”

“How was it?” Nathan said, torn between jealousy and simple curiosity.

“In some ways, pretty terrific—practice makes perfect—but, I don’t know, I think he’s kind of jealous of women, because he thinks he misses out on some big scores because he can’t fake an orgasm. How ‘bout you?”

“Well, I don’t have a lot to compare it with, but…it was right after Evie died, you know? And I felt so bad for him. He didn’t want to have married Evie in the first place, he didn’t want her back in Haven—which was as much wanting her to be safe as wanting her out of his hair…”

“Yeah,” Audrey said. “Duke never can live down to his own publicity. It’s fun watching him fail at being a bastard, or even a rogue.”

“And, so, there we were on the boat, and I couldn’t stand how sad he was. Also, I guess we were pretty drunk.”

“You’re a cheap date, Nathan,” Audrey said. “What’d you have, like, half a light beer?”

“Well, I know I didn’t drink anything with worms in it, you have to draw the line somewhere. Audrey, he was crying, for once not because he thought it would get him anything but because he was so sad, and he felt so bad that she died when he was angry at her and he couldn’t save her, and…well, he didn’t want to be cold and he didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to tell him that alone, that’s not so bad. But he’s my friend—sort of my friend—and I couldn’t lie to him. And I wanted to feel something. I wanted to **want** something. ”

“I remember what the nuns taught me,” Audrey said. “Taught somebody, anyway. It’s hard to sell sending people to Hell just because they never ran across a Catholic priest, you know? So there’s a thing called the ‘baptism of Desire.’ If you’re a good person, and you would have wanted to be baptized if you had the chance, then that counts.”

There was a gleam of something rising, falling, in the corner of Audrey’s eye. She chased it—it was a wadded-up ball of yellow legal pad pages that Nathan was tossing and catching in the gloom. “What you said about a connection?” Nathan said. “With Duke, I could, well, it was like snow on the TV, or not all the bars on a cellphone, but, I could sort of. Feel something. Almost. Not all the way there. Not as strong as the way I can feel when you touch me, Audrey, or even when you’re near me, but something. I don’t know if it’s just Duke, or if I like men. Anyplace else but Haven, I might have to worry, gay cops don’t always have it that easy, but here, hey, least of my worries.” And now he didn’t have to worry about what the Chief might think, unless blue picnic coolers set themselves up as moral arbiters.

“Tell you one thing for sure,” Audrey said. “We’d better not enter any drag balls. Because considering that Duke’s a con man, I’m…well, I don’t think I’m literally Lucy Ripley, because I met her and the world didn’t explode, but I’m **whatever** and you’re…Afflicted…so I’d bet against us in any category involving Realness. Okay, enough of the dramatic shadows,” Audrey said. “You told me your big dark secret, and I didn’t think it was that dark. Count of three, I’m turning on the light.” She clicked on her desk lamp. They both blinked.  
“Come on over on Tuesday night,” Audrey said. “We’ll get Duke to come over and sort this out.” Her desk lamp cast enough light for her to walk over to Nathan’s desk and spin his swivel chair part-way toward her. She framed his legs, straddling him, and leaned over, steadying herself with her hands over his wrists on the chair arms. She leaned forward into a deep kiss. He could feel her breasts brushing against him, approximately the size and nobility of Mount Rushmore. She disentangled herself, swinging one leg past Nathan as if she were dismounting from a bicycle. A very confused, horny bicycle. Audrey headed out of the office, pausing for a last word at the door. “Bet you felt that,” she said.

Dear God, he thought. Is that what everybody feels? Then how do they ever get any work done? But, before he committed any act of public indecency for which he’d have to arrest himself, some helpfully discouraging thoughts ran through his head. He thought he could deduce exactly what Audrey had in mind—“We’re detectives,” as Audrey always said when someone else would say “Well, duh”—and he really didn’t want his first time with her to be in front of an audience. Then he grimaced. At least that way when he disappointed her, there’d be someone else around to take up the slack.

The way he saw it, he’d spent his whole life disappointing the Chief, and then when he died, or whatever you’d call it, his estate was distributed. The Chief was generous in his benefactions, and now Nathan could disappoint **everybody**.

5.  
Audrey, out for a morning run, paused with her leg up on a stone wall to stretch, and checked her pulse meter. She took a drink from her water bottle, capped it, and started back up the road. It wasn’t the first paradox of her work in Haven. She couldn’t really get too worked up at the prospect of someone continuing to create ecstasy with mediocre food, and she didn’t think Duke would starve when he still had his extralegal interests to support him. But the situation was unstable enough that perhaps Haven should be kept quarantined to work out its problems.

It reminded her of one of her favorite old movies, “Annie Hall.” Bert Greenshawe might not even think he was a chicken, but Haven (or at least some factions) sure needed the eggs. In this case, sizzling sunny-side-up on the griddle next to a pile of bacon strips, or buried in rice pudding beneath a drizzle of nutmeg.

She ran past the café; it was too early for people to get their take-out orders on the way to work so there was only a short line out the door for the booths and the stools at the counter. A couple of the people on line groused when she walked past them, but she flashed her badge and the grumbles declined to a mutter.

“Mr. Greenshawe?” she asked (easily recognizing him from the extensive press coverage). “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

“Sure,” he said, leading her to a small stockroom with a sturdy door. Amid the metal shelves of giant cans of fruit cocktail and green beans was a cot, neatly made up with a blue blanket folded at the foot. At first Audrey thought it was draped with a white sheet, but she thought she recognized one of the banquet tablecloths from Nisbet’s Party Rentals.  
She’d worked a break-in there six months back, and now she kept seeing the tablecloths everywhere from Police Department retirement parties to the Knights of Columbus Toys for Tots Fundraiser. Audrey raised her eyebrows. “Well, I don’t sleep much,” Bert said. “Sometimes when it’s slow, I’ll come in here and get my head down for forty winks.”

“You’ve really made this place a success,” Audrey said. “I have to congratulate you. Mr. Greenshawe, you’re not from here, are you?”

“Well, yes and no,” he said, leaning back with his elbow between the ranks of cans of cut corn, gesturing for her to take the cot. She remained standing. “I was born here, and lived here for the first five years of my life. Then my dad got transferred, so we moved…they’d assign him to a new division every few years, and we’d move again. I never really felt I put down roots, you know? So after college, I went to work for that same corporation, because it felt like family.  
But then…well, 2008 wasn’t a very good year. For anybody, but for me especially. My job got eliminated, and my wife divorced me. We never had any kids. I got a pretty good severance package, though. I didn’t feel like I had any reason to stay in Denver, and I knew I’d never get another job like the one I had. So I followed an old dream of mine and went to cooking school. And then I thought maybe if I came back here, I could put down roots.”

“Mr. Greenshawe,” Audrey said, “Haven’s…not like other towns. There are a lot of inexplicable things that happened, that keep happening. Mostly, pretty bad things. A lot of the people here, well, we say they’re ‘Troubled.’ Or ‘Afflicted.’ Things will be OK for a while, for decades even, but then it all starts up again. I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but I don’t think you’re necessarily such a great cook. It’s like you can squirt squid ink over people so they can’t see what they’re eating. No, it’s really more like you’re giving them drugs and they’re…getting the munchies.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady,” he said. “I’ve always excelled, no matter what I’ve done. Worked hard to be the best. And this is…the best diner.”

Audrey just stared at him until he dropped his eyes.

“Anyway, what’s wrong with it? Even if it’s some kind of voodoo, or spell, or something?”

“Under normal circumstances—what am I talking about, around here there aren’t any normal circumstances?—nothing. But I think that whatever is happening here needs to be contained. We need to work it out ourselves. Having a lot of outsiders is bad for the town. And, frankly, a lot of the time it’s bad for the outsiders.”

Bert took a handful of chocolate chip cookies off a baking sheet slotted into a rack. He offered some to Audrey. She didn’t really want any, but thought she should take a couple to maintain their rapport.

Bert sat down heavily on the cot, chomping on cookies. “Well, I do have a decision to make…I have to think about my future…and it’s coming up to winter. I still remember how cold it gets here. Back from when I was a little kid. Or, did that change? Because of global warming or this…thing…you’re talking about?”  
“Believe me, Mr. Greenshawe, it still gets damn cold in the winter here.” She unfolded a couple of sheets of paper: an address and phone number from Nathan’s rolodex, and a printout of some information she had googled.

As he read and pondered, she nibbled at the cookies.

She didn’t think they were very good—not just crisp, but a little dry; the chocolate chunks were too big, and there was too much of the modish addition of sea salt.

6.  
Audrey welcomed the balance in her life. Sometimes what you need is a man whose response to a problem is a sound, methodical investigation resulting in full documentation. Or, lately, two sets of full documentation, one tailored to outside-world acceptability.

Sometimes, what you need is a man whose response to a problem is “Tequila!”

Tuesday was the day the Gull was closed, although what with the Nan & Dan situation Duke wasn’t sure if he should stay open seven days a week just to break even or throw in the towel entirely. But just because the restaurant was closed didn’t mean he didn’t have a full day of work, doing inventory, doing the ordering, and catching up on the books.

He looked up from the desk, which was frivolously ornamented with loops of adding-machine tape, to see Audrey standing in the doorway.

“Been there long?” he asked.

“A while,” she said. “Watching you. Hey, you got your wish. Bert Greenshawe’s leaving town. He got a multi-million-dollar offer from one of those evil corporations that everybody loves to hate. They want to franchise the cafe. He didn’t want to deal with them at first, but I persuaded him. They get to use the Nan & Dan’s name, keep the same signs up, use the menus—the physical menus, with the tape on the edges, you know? He wanted to take his lucky paring knife, but they wouldn’t let him. Tacked on another twenty grand for the privilege. And, of course, they get to use his recipes. They made him give up the cigar box with the hand-written recipe cards. You know, for the 64 servings of tapioca pudding and the shrimp wiggle and the spam hotdish.”

“They won’t want the spam hotdish,” Duke said solemnly. “Not the kind of native New England cuisine they want, y’know? But, seriously, doesn’t he have to do some kind of executive chef thing where he’s hanging around all the time? Because then my problem only gets worse, because that’d mean some mega-bucks conglomerate trying to put me out of business.”

“Just the opposite. He had to sign a covenant not to compete, where he promises for two years he won’t open another restaurant or work in any commercial kitchen. Well, as soon as the check clears, he’s going to his new job. Out in the desert. There’s a pretty little town, where there’s a home for kids with really bad respiratory problems, and their families. I think they deserve to be happy at least three times a day, don’t you? So he’s going to be dedicated. And altruistic. And warm. And gone.”

Duke guffawed. “Parker, you are a rock star! And it hurts me to say it, what with my opinion of law enforcement.”

“On that happy note, come on upstairs,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”

Her tone didn’t sound promising, but he was pretty sick of working anyway. He’d spent a lot of quality time imagining the hot Audrey-on-Audrey action before the other Parker vanished, so he followed her up the stairs. Nathan was there already, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Duke,” Nathan said. “You haven’t been entirely honest with us.”

“You mean I’ve been **some** honest with you? Don’t let it get out, there goes my reputation.”

“We’re not toys,” Nathan said. “You can’t just pick us up and put us back in the crate when you’re done playing.” Audrey looked at him, and he shrugged; he knew it was a bad analogy, Duke just left his Transformers on the rug.

“What you don’t understand,” Duke said, “Aud, considering that you’re a girl, and Nathan, you’d know if you had a regular working dick, is that it’s like those stupid frat-boy movies, you know? With, like four guys and three cheerleaders in the convertible. Sure, there’s a golden retriever driving, and he’s a dog, admittedly, but he’s the only one that’s sober. I had a chance to get some, and I did.” He crossed his arms defiantly. He didn’t think they were mad enough to flat-out murder him. If they had violent retribution in mind, he was a head taller than Audrey (although, he realized uneasily, there was all that FBI kung fu training). He suspected that Nathan’s invulnerability was chipping, but even so, he knew he didn’t have a chance if they ganged up on him.

If, that is, what they had in mind was **violent** retribution.

Audrey reached up to put her hands on Nathan’s shoulders and kissed him again. After that brief forever, they noticed that Duke had taken advantage of their absorption to kick off his Frye boots and red-tipped hunting socks and shed his beige roll-neck sweater. His jeans were worn to be soft and almost oyster-grey. There was a promising bulge behind the fly. When he unbuckled his rodeo buckle and unzipped, orange bikini briefs, with black piping, emerged.

Audrey and Nathan burst out laughing. “Okay, instant retcon,” Audrey said. “Forget about it. We never wanted to do this. You’re not even here.”

“Yeah?” he said. “First of all, you expect me to have sex with a guy who’s wearing size 13 ½ penny loafers, so la, la, I’m not listening. Also, ante up, Parker. Let’s see what you’ve got that makes you the Underwear Police.”

“The Underwear badge and the Underwear gun, and don’t you forget it, buddy,” she said. But she wriggled out of her jeans and gestured for Nathan to unbutton her Kelly green silk blouse. Underneath, she had a simple but not inappropriate white eyelet half-bra and boy shorts.

With one hand, Duke reached under the band of the bra, gently caressing her breast. He used his other hand to clasp Nathan’s hand, where he stood behind Audrey, and to press it to her other breast. Nathan leaned over Audrey’s head, a little awkwardly, to kiss Duke. They broke apart, and spent a few seconds wondering what to do.

“Your litter awaits, my lady,” Duke said, scooping up the top half of Audrey. Nathan bent down and grabbed her feet. They started off toward the bed, with Audrey protesting the means of transportation but not the destination at all. At all.

7.  
When the noise woke Audrey, she glanced over at the glowing dial of the alarm clock. 4:34 am. She wasn’t frightened, but just to be prepared, she grabbed her gun from the night table and crammed her feet into her running shoes (the floor was splintery).

She got to the kitchen, and found Duke there, gazing out the window. He hadn’t bothered to put on the light. There was a bright moon, a smuggler’s moon, which Audrey figured was all the light he needed. After all, it was his apartment, before. And maybe again. Also, some light leaked from the refrigerator door that Duke hadn’t bothered to close all the way.

Duke wore Nathan’s boxer shorts (which had an irrelevant pattern of little diamonds with pinpoint circles inside) and, tragically, Audrey’s flipflops. His feet spilled over and he had already assassinated one of the toe thongs.

“Hey, a naked pretty girl with a gun!” Duke said. “Now, **that’s** hot.”

“I’m surprised the racket you were making didn’t wake Nathan.”

Duke shrugged. “First day on a new job, and they make you pull a double shift? ‘Course the guy’s tired.” He plucked at the elastic waistband of the shorts. “Last year, I was going to sign him up for ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,’ but I guess I’d better check their definition of ‘straight.’”

Duke slung one of his arms around Audrey’s shoulders, and she put her arm around his waist and rested her head on his chest. She had less than no idea about what was going to happen to her, to Nathan, to Duke, to Haven. But, with utter clarity, she knew what was going to happen in the next couple of minutes. Duke was going to slug down a bunch of orange juice from the nearly-full half-gallon in his other hand. He was going to drink all of it except maybe an inch, and then put the carton back in the refrigerator. Audrey knew this, and knew that there was no point at all in remonstrating because Duke was…inherently Duke.

“Deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball,” Duke said.


End file.
